Boston Consulting Group, one of the world’s largest management consultancies, has awarded a startup called CarbonCapture a contract for carbon capture services.

The contract will span five years. In that time frame, CarbonCapture will remove 40,000 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere on BCG’s part to help offset the consultancy’s carbon emissions.

CarbonCapture extracts CO2 from the atmosphere using custom direct air capture, or DAC, machines. Those machines use materials called zeolites to capture and store carbon in a form that can be moved underground for storage.

Zeolites are used in a range of areas including for the production of laundry detergents. Because of this market dynamic, there’s a large supply available, which means machines that use the materials to capture carbon can theoretically be mass produced in significant numbers.

That’s important for Los Angeles-based CarbonCapture. The startup plans to build a facility in Wyoming that, once fully operational, will house enough DAC machines to remove five million tons of CO2 from the atmosphere per year.

BCG is not only buying CO2 removal services from CarbonCapture but will also provide the startup with business assistance in the form of management consulting.

For BCG, the deal is important for two key reasons.

One is that it will advance the firm’s plans to become net zero by 2030. Net zero is a term applied to companies that remove enough carbon from the atmosphere to balance out their emissions.

Second, BCG has a large sustainability consulting practice. Given the growing interest in DAC machines like the ones CarbonCapture makes, the practice will eventually be expected to advise corporate clients on the technology.

That means it’s helpful for BCG to gain experience with the technology. And there’s no better way of doing that than by partnering with a DAC machine manufacturer.

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